Tales from the Office on Employee Recognition, Employee Rewards, Life Hacks, Gamification, and Human Resources.

Category Archives: Employee Rewards

March 1: Employee Appreciation Day

Employee Appreciation Day takes place on the first Friday of every March, and was created as a way to show recognition and appreciation for all the hard work employees do throughout the year. Many companies use this holiday as an opportunity to do something fun for their employees to show them just how much they appreciate them!

Since we’re appreciating their work and awesome, go-getter attitudes, it’s important we know what they want!

Kate Kastenbaum Senior HR Manager

The company Chatmeter took a competitive approach to their Employee Appreciation Day by running a social media contest.

In the week leading up to Employee Appreciation Day we are running a social media contest for employees to post their favorite picture from a past Chatmeter activity, with a caption naming an idea for something fun or crazy the team could do next.

Employee Recognition Increases Motivation and Retention

Employee Recognition with Recognize is a simple way to increase employee satisfaction, motivation, and retention. In a recent employee recognition survey at Recognize found that 49% have left a job for not being recognized, and 77% appreciate being recognized for their work. Most people surveyed also feel more motivated to work hard when they’re recognized by their managers and peers. We also found that by using Recognize 96% of employees felt more connected to their employer, and 90% wanted to stay with their company longer.

8 Ways to Recognize your Employees on Employee Appreciation Day

Send employee recognitions to all your employees telling them how much you appreciate them

With Recognize, it’s easy to give employee recognition for your staff’s hard work and dedication, not only on Employee Appreciation Day, but everyday as well! With the Recognize bulk employee recognition tool, you can easily recognize every single member of your staff by importing a spreadsheet.

Print off posters of some of your employee’s recognitions and hang them up around the office!

Posters are a fun way to bring the digital space into your physical space and showcase your super star employees in a new way.

Organize a town hall meeting to get all of your staff celebrating together

Town Hall meetings are a great opportunity for the leaders of the company to gather everyone around and recognize standout employees. If you have remote workers, it’s also a great excuse to get everyone in the same room for some camaraderie.

Interview different employees and create an Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook story to showcase your employee appreciation

Since everyone is always on their phones anyway, try bringing the Employee Appreciation Day experience mobile! Interview different employees about direct reports, managers, or peers they want to recognize for doing a great job, and post them on your social media application of choice.

Cater a lunch

There’s nothing people love more than free food! A surefire to make sure everyone is in the office that day is to have your staff’s favorite restaurant cater a lunch for the whole office. If you really want to make a day of it, have several food trucks come out to the office parking lot and celebrate the arrival of Spring in the great outdoors! See more employee reward ideas here.

Place a single flower or plant on your employee desks

A single flower with a small handwritten note can go a long way to showing each and every employee you value them. Flowers are also a great way to show those cold dark winter days are leaving and spring is here!

Give to a local non-profit to help make the local community better

Show your employees that you not only appreciate them, but you appreciate their community as well. Give to a local non-profit that invigorates your local community and makes everyone’s lives better!

Get out of the office and volunteer

Have your staff take the afternoon off, go out together, and do something good for the community, like cleaning up a local park or beach. It’s great way to spend time together and show your appreciation to your local community as well.

If you try out any of these ideas for Employee Appreciation Day, or come up with some of your own, we would love to hear about it! Send us pictures or shoot us an email of how you recognized your employees on Employee Appreciation Day 2019!

From forward-thinking companies from all over the world, this is what we see as trends, advice, and tips for employee recognition and employee rewards.

Automatic Employee Recognition

Don’t rely on a paper-based system any longer. Incorporate automatic recognition for anniversaries, email clients, and more.

Intrinsic Motivation as Employee Rewards

Dan Pink’s Ted Talk changed the way companies look at motivating knowledge workers. Look beyond monetary rewards in a program to maximize results. Try status, access, or powers as other forms of incentives.

Leadership Buy-In

Gallup poll found recognition from executives or management is far more significant than from peers. Encourage leadership to recognize staff for all-for-one mentality.

Start Small, Think Big

Start with a program people can wrap their heads around, while havingvision for the future.This increases adoption at early stages, as well as keeping it fresh later on.

Accessible to Everyone

All levels and departments of the organization should have access to the employee recognition program.

“Employees are a company’s greatest asset – they’re your competitive advantage. You want to attract and retain the best; provide them with encouragement, stimulus, and make them feel that they are an integral part of the company’s mission.” – Anne M. Mulcahy

How do you pick the best types of employee rewards for your company? There are numerous methods of praising staff. Each and every company’s situation is unique, and what might work for one doesn’t necessarily have to work for another. To try and help you determine the best way to motivate your workforce, we have sought to compile some employee rewards for you to consider. Here are seven of them.

1) Ideas for Employee Monetary Gift or Products

Who doesn’t want a shiny new Macbook?

Although we have quoted Dan Pink in the past as for saying monetary rewards can reduce productivity, staff nonetheless love cash and monetary prizes when appropriate. There are many options here to motivate your workers with monetary rewards. Don’t just stop at the employee when thinking about rewards. Consider their family as well.

Cash

Apple products, like MacBooks or the watch

HD flat screen TVs

Home spa package (lotions, bath bombs, oils)

Cooking appliances

Drones or other novelty high tech

Sporting equipment

Bicycles for adults and children

Car wash

In-home or in-office hair cut

Books

Pay for day care

The trick is to be creative. Ask your staff what they would want to have. Get your office community involved.

2) Gift Cards Selection for Your Employee Rewards

Cards are an efficient way to reward staff. Some benefits of gift cards include they are sent automatically through Recognize for free with the initial subscription, with the large variety of gift cards, there is something for everyone, and gift cards are digital, so they are always accessible. Popular cards according to a 2016 study include:

Target

Gamestop

Chipotle

Amazon

Walmart

Apple

Bestbuy

Fandango

Cabelas

Netflix

Home Depot

Nike

Victoria’s Secret

Sephora

AMC

REI

Whole Foods

Visa prepared cards (who doesn’t love cash?)

3) Monetary Experience Ideas for Your Staff

From boat cruises, tickets to a game, or gym pass, create a unique list of experiences for your staff.

4) Non-Monetary Experiences

This is where a company have to get creative about what they can leverage as employee rewards. Non-monetary experiences and non-monetary gifts are less utilized and redeemed, except for the day off. Everyone loves a day off! You may want to subsidize these rewards to have some of them redeemed more often.

Lunch with the boss (or CEO)

Boss for the day

Change offices for a day

Paid time off (15min, 30min, 1hr, half day, full day)

Conferences

Pizza Party

5) Company Swag Gifts

As you can imagine, these are less redeemed than other categories, since these are things that companies already give away for free.

Company sweatshirts

Company hats

Company mugs

6) Power for Staff

Companies rarely realize this is a reward you can offer and it costs no money. For those in the workplace that pull ahead, show promise, and deliver results promptly, assigning more power through delegation can offer them motivation to continue on the same trajectory they are on. Among the most common methods of assigning more power to better performing individuals is through assigning them some supervisory duties such as making them team leader.

Power to make a decision in an area they have show expertise

Power to come up with new ideas to tackle problems

7) Donating to Charity

Helping out is a part of the human condition. Involving your workforce in charitable events works towards building cohesion within your workers. When they relax and connect at a personal level while contributing to a worthy cause, the effects will spill over to the office as rapport and in turn productivity and retention improves. Out of the box, Recognize provides gift cards for a number of charities:

Charity Gift Cards:

The Nature Conservancy

Girls Who Code

RED

American Cancer Society

Clean Water Fund

National Park Foundation

Special Olympics

World of Children Award

Summer Search

Long Live The Kings

Non-Gift Card Charities:

Mix it Up

We recommend a mix of the above methods to motivate staff most effectively. Involving your workforce in determining the appraisal package is also a way of making the process more efficient. After all, they know what resonates with them. If leadership can offer perks and rewards staff love, your workforce will be more committed.